Software Piracy Will Get Worse

gollum123 writes "According to a study done by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and research firm IDC, it is likely that software piracy will continue to expand as the Internet grows. Worldwide revenue loss due to software piracy was estimated at $33 billion for 2004 with about 1/3 of the software used being illegal. But within five years, that number could boom to two-thirds, with the value of pirated software nearing US$200 billion. Countries with the highest piracy rates were Vietnam, Ukraine, China, Zimbabwe and Indonesia while United States, New Zealand, Austria, Sweden and the United Kingdom had the lowest."

Comments

Re:I do not condone piracy but...

[zippthorne]

Only ignorant college students pirate software. My university library has apparantly purchased some kind of site license which allows students to install software (as long as they don't copy the library's disk) According to the librarians (and the legal notice on the list-o-programs), there is no requirement that the software be deleted upon returning the disk to the library, which is good for students because the offering includes a version of windows XP and Office XP, which they would obviously need for not less than an entire semester. Mine is one of the smaller colleges, so i can't imagine that other universities aren't doing the same thing.

Re:Crazy predictions

[ScentCone]

You're right, of course. Only one person should pay for the accounting software used to run things like Zimbabwe's banks or police departments - perhaps you, or maybe me. Thereafter, everyone should get it for free. Large software development shops should be able to subsist on just the one copy's retail price, right? OK, so $100 won't fund an entire company - we might as well just not charge at all. But those people may want paychecks as they work, so I guess they should be 1) government employees? or 2) waiters, living off of tips, and writing code on their days off?

How about this: Zimbabwe can use whatever free software that the volunteers who make it feel like making, and when some person or group in that country is doing something lucrative enough to pay for (and wants) a commercial title, then they can buy it, just like I do. Saying that Zimbabwe's local economy can't support $100 software purchases has to be said in the context of it also not locally producing software that would sell for $100 here in the states. It goes both ways. When they do something that's as valuable to me as that $100 piece of software, then we're all set! In the meantime, they'll have to grow their economy, just like everyone else. If they can do that on a platform of F/OSS, then great. If they choose to do it by pirating something, then it's reasonable to focus on that and say it out loud. If, though, there's enough promise in Zimbabwe to attract serious investment, and there's the expectation that rule of law and a stable society will support such... then $100 for the software on the desktop of every employee in the company being invested in is trivial.